Authors:Per IsraelsonAbstract: Title: Imagining Pastness. Comics, Media ecology and Memory in Maus and Vi kommer snart hem igenThe ethical and epistemological challenges accompanying representations of the past have been at the center of historiography at least since the days of Leopold von Ranke in the mid-nineteenth century. The artifice of representational forms, as well as the ideological entanglements of the position of enunciation, has always been in conflict with Ranke’s historiographical goal of telling the past as “it really was”. In the heyday of postmodernism and in the wake of the so-called linguistic turn, the epistemological and ethical impact of representational forms was widely debated. This paper uses two concepts presented during the postmodernist debates – Linda Hutcheon’s “historiographical metafiction” and Hayden White’s “practical past” – in a discussion of two graphic narratives about the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman’s canonical Maus. A Survivor’s Tale (1986, 1991) and Vi kommer snart hem igen (2018) by Jessica Bab Bonde and Peter Bergting. Adapting Hutcheon’s and White’s concepts to a posthumanist and media-ecological conceptuality, in which the worldmaking power of media is highlighted as a co-productive or sympoietic process, the paper “Imaging Pastness. Comics, Media Ecology and Memory” shows how the past is not represented, but rather emerges from the embodied participation in the medium as memory technologyPubDate: 2018-12-21DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.365Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Lisa KällströmAbstract: Title: Pippi and Utopia. A Cover Illustration in the Wake of the West German Student RevolutionThe cover of the West German collection of Pippi Longstocking stories Pippi Langstrumpf (1967) shows a girl standing upside down. The image was drafted by the renowned illustrator Rolf Rettich. This exclusive edition, featuring an additional 200 illustrations by Rettich inside the book, was released in connection with Astrid Lindgren's 60th birthday. The edition positioned Lindgren as an author of ambitious children's literature and established Oetinger’s standing as a successful publisher. Rettich’s cover image is my starting point for discussing the idea of the liberating capacity of the Pippi stories. In the light of the political turmoil of this period, Pippi was both hailed as a representative of fantastic literature and criticized for being pseudo-revolutionary, ensnaring children in daydreaming about a good world, when instead they should learn how to deal with everyday life from realistic literature. In order to analyze the visual rhetoric in its historical context, I choose an approach that in my case unfolds the well-known Pippi figure as a generative ”utopian principle”.PubDate: 2018-12-18DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.361Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Rebecca Stubsjoen, Åse Marie OmmundsenAbstract: Title: What’s the Deal with Monsters' Fright, Frolic and “Othering” in Når alle sover (2011)This article explores how othering is at play in Nikolai Houm and Rune Markhus’ picturebook Når alle sover (2011), which features a monster. By use of picturebook analysis and theory on othering, “the other”, monsters and affects, we seek to examine which role a monster may play in a picturebook, and what makes the monster character in a children’s picturebook powerful and relevant. Our findings suggest that the monster's role is not to scare the child reader, but rather to develop an often taboo-ridden topic, namely othering. The monster stands out from the crowd, and the majority group excludes it. With its many deviating features, the monster functions as a powerful character that challenges the reader’s prejudices around “us” and “them”. Our conclusion is that the monster can be a flexible literary tool for conveying certain difficulties and concerns. Very often, the monster is used to question ethical topics in our society such as xenophobia and othering.PubDate: 2018-12-18DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.359Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Maria Pujol VallsAbstract: The article examines two sets of illustrations of the children’s novel Tonje Glimmerdal (2009) by Norwegian author Maria Parr. The original version in Norwegian, illustrated by Åshild Irgens, and the translation into Spanish, illustrated by Zuzanna Celej, are examined. The aim is to show how the concepts of nature and landscape are modified in the translated version. This analysis illuminates how illustrations have an impact on texts, and how illustrations create new meanings. While the original novel is considered a winter pastoral as young protagonist Tonje lives in the mountains and finds her purpose in life in her homeland valley, Irgens’ illustrations foreground Tonje’s actions, whereas Celej’s work is more focused on the landscape. The different ways in which these two versions of the book depict the winter pastoral, and the image of nature, are analysed from an ecocritical perspective, especially following Carol Glotfelty’s and Greg Garrard’s approaches.PubDate: 2018-12-18DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.351Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Ida Moen JohnsonAbstract: : Tove Jansson is known the world over for her Moomin books – especially for her illustrations of their characters. Recently, her books for adults, to which Jansson dedicated her writing efforts almost exclusively after publication of the final Moomin novel in 1970, have also garnered international praise and attention. Although Jansson has clearly “left” Moominvalley in these later works, themes, imagery, and even characters from the late Moomin books carry over into her texts for adults. For Tove Holländer, this carryover begs the question of the “absent illustration” (“frånvarande illustrationen”) in Jansson’s first collection of short stories for adults, Lyssnerskan [The Listener], first published in 1971. The notion of the “absent illustration” raises compelling questions in relationship to Jansson’s authorship: On what basis can we argue that illustrations are absent from a text' How can or should we imagine these “absent” images' Using Gérard Genette’s concept of paratext, I argue that “absent illustrations” in The Listener illuminate the tension between word and image that characterizes Jansson’s body of work. Genette’s theory is useful for Jansson scholarship as it allows one to see the parts of Jansson’s production not just as thematically and aesthetically related, but as potentially constitutive of one another’s meaning and reception.PubDate: 2018-12-17DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.355Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Kristin HallbergAbstract: Title: “But no one wants to wear clothes: Oh mother, let us always go naked!” Mollie Faustman’s Portrayal of Naked ChildrenThe Swedish modernist artist Mollie Faustman (1883–1966) depicted the child throughout her artistic practice as a painter, as a writer for adults as well as for children, and in her narratives she made picture and text interact. The focus of this article is the nude and the naked child in Faustman’s writing for adults (causerie) and children (cartoons) for the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter in the 1920s. The preschool girl Tuttan and her younger brother Putte appear in both types of narrative. The article discusses the naked child body in terms of vitalism and naturism, and within the context of both literary and art criticism. The iconotext reading shows the complexity of how Faustman uses the naked body to embrace a vast spectrum of feelings. In the cartoons, she portrays and visualizes the siblings’ rivaly and play in the portrayal of their naked bodies. In her texts for adults, on the other hand, the naked and naïve body functions as an image of mother love. PubDate: 2018-12-17DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.363Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Tuva HaglundAbstract: Fans and fan communities play an important part in today’s participatory culture. A central aspect of fans engagement in fictional worlds are the fan made artworks, for example fan fiction, fan art or fan vids, inspired by the original story and shared within the community. The article examines fan art related to the fictional worlds of the Engelsfors trilogy (2011–2013) by Sara Bergmark Elfgren and Mats Strandberg, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997–2007). The analysis comprises two different motifs, both related to common repertoires for fan interpretation. “Shipping” is the term for fan’s engagement in a specific romantic relationship. In this article, I discuss the romance between Linnéa and Vanessa (the Engelsfors trilogy). The other motif, “racebending”, refers to artworks where fans change the race or ethnicity of one or more character. I analyse fan art were Hermione (Harry Potter) is depicted as black. Fans publish their artworks within the communities where the participants share knowledge, experiences, and emotions connected to the fictional world. My discussion focuses on how fan art functions as visual communication within these specific contexts. While fan fiction is usually described as adding to or transforming the fictional universe, fan art can also be said to highlight or underline specific aspects of the story or the reading experience by giving them visual representation.PubDate: 2018-12-11DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.339Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Jonas AsklundAbstract: Title: The Sound as a Clue. Multimodal Aurality in Martin Widmark’s and Helena Willis’ Schlagersabotören : Research on multimodal narration in illustrated children´s books and picturebooks have mainly focused on the relations between the text, the illustrations and the book itself as a medium. Relatively few studies discuss the importance of sound in this context. In this article, however, I examine what Irina Rajewsky refers to as a medial configuration presented by an illustrated book for children and an accompanying CD including the narrator’s voice, songs and music. Drawing on the concept of aurality and Lars Elleström’s model for intermedial analysis, I analyze how text, illustration, and sound mediate a detective story for children: Martin Widmark’s and Helena Willis’ Schlagersabotören (2012). The concluding discussion combines perspectives from both genre theory and intermediality studies: In which way can auditory text and non-verbal sound present the young reader with some of the clues needed in a detective story' Two major functions of sound as a medium can be identified. Firstly, non-verbal sound helps the reader distinguish between the different diegetic levels in the story, thereby focusing the locked room so typical of the detective story. Secondly, auditory text and vocal pitch help the reader perceive some of the anger and frustration among the suspects in that room. Sound, together with text and illustration, presents the reader with a mystery, but also with the cognitive tools to solve it.

Authors:Peter KostenniemiAbstract: Title: The Monster, the Child, and the Consequences of Discipline. Intermedial Dialogue in Allan Rune Petterson’s Novels about Frankenstein’s AuntBetween Allan Rune Pettersson’s novels Frankenstein’s Aunt (1978) and Frankenstein’s Aunt Returns (1989) there emerges a contradictory view on discipline. Whilst being a dominant motif in the first novel, discipline of the monstrous is dissuaded from in the second. The aim of this article is to explain this contradiction through an analysis of the meaning ascribed to the monstrous body in the two novels, respectively. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory and Michail Bachtin’s work on the chronotope is used whilst intermedia theory provides a framework to explain the relation between the novels in the light of a TV series based on the first novel.The first novel creates a gothic chronotope where the protagonist Hanna Frankenstein aims to atone for her nephew’s sins in the past (his creation of Frankenstein’s Monster). In the novel, the monstrous body is assigned meaning through a correlation with the discourse on the child which, thus, legitimizes her acts of disciplining the monsters. In the TV series, monstrosity is described a result of loneliness and consequently, the function of discipline is altered. The Monster falls in love with a human girl, and aunt Hanna aims to turn him into a ladies man. Finally, a wedding between the Monster and the human girl marks a harmonious ending where monstrosity is obliterated altogether.In the second novel, the Monster and his bride live a bourgeois life and aunt Hanna accuses them of betraying their individuality. However, their lifestyle is the result of her own acts of discipline in the first novel. She therefore has to atone for new sins in the past, only now committed by herself. The second novel thus reinvents the gothic chronotope and also interprets the first novel in the light of the TV series, which provides a missing link between the novels. In the end, the second novel advocates the co-existence of the monstrous alongside the human.PubDate: 2018-12-11DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.347Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Lena Manderstedt, Annbritt PaloAbstract: The award-winning novels Legenden om Sally Jones (2008; The Legend of Sally Jones, 2018) and Mördarens apa (2014; The Murderer’s Ape, 2017) written and illustrated by Jakob Wegelius present a thought-provoking interplay between verbal and visual narration. However, an online data collection of blog posts and online reviews reveals that readers discuss the verbal narration and intersectional themes in these novels, but often overlook the pictures.This study contributes to the discussion of narrative interaction by juxtaposing analyses of pictures in the novels and online comments by readers on these literary works. The material thus consists of comments by non-professional writers, and the degree and type of attention paid to narrative interaction in these comments is foregrounded. In order to examine the word/image interaction in Wegelius’ novels, Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott’s typology for interaction is used on a selection of images and, when possible, on readers’ responses to these novels.The results show that in the material, the verbal narration is privileged. Less than a third of the online material explicitly comments on the visual narration. Even fewer readers comment on the relationship between the verbal and the visual narration. The study presents potential explanations to the relative absence of comments on the visual narration in these literary works. A likely explanation is that the readers perceive the symmetrical and enhancing relation between the verbal and the visual narration, and, thus, the readers consider the visual narration redundant or an add-on. Therefore, the article highlights the continuous need for explicit training in visual literacy, as the interaction between words and images has a bearing on the narration.PubDate: 2018-12-02DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.336Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Elina DrukerAbstract: Title: Engelsk titel : Picturebook research in the Nordic countries is in a vital and interesting phase, characterized by both established positions and expansion. The article discusses the development in the field, from the stage of initiation in the early 1980s to becoming an established and varied research area. A number of disciplines and lines can be traced in picturebook research today. While some researchers have focused on the history of the media, others have studied the complex relationship between the text and the images or tried to develop the theoretical framework of the medium. Another prominent approach is to investigate what happens in the reading experience and process and how picturebooks might develop children's literacy skills. Despite discipline or focus, picturebook research in Sweden has established itself as a special research field within children's literature research. While mainly discussing Swedish research, the article also attempts to demonstrate connections and differences with the research field in the other Nordic countries.PubDate: 2018-11-21DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.334Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Malena JansonAbstract: Title: Kjell Grede’s Hugo and Josephine. An Expression of Children’s Culture of Its Time and a Children’s Film of TomorrowThe debut feature film of director Kjell Grede, Hugo and Josephine (1967), is an adaptation of Maria Gripe’s literary trilogy and is often referred to as the best Swedish children’s film ever made. Upon its premiere, the film was very well received by the critics, but some also claimed that it wasn’t suitable for children. This article uses this ambivalence towards Hugo and Josephine as its starting point and demonstrates, via adaptation studies, film studies and childhood studies, how the film transgresses children’s film conventions.For example, my analysis of the film form reveals that Hugo and Josephine is a story largely taking place inside the protagonist. Therefore, it should not be seen as a realistic depiction of a series of events, but rather as a formation of a child’s apprehension of the same events. This filmic mode, which I term “a child’s realism”, can be interpreted through the liminal spacetime as well as hyperbolic and phantasmic occurrences. Also, the film thematises childhood as a social construction by presenting different ways of being a child and an adult respectively.In this way, Hugo and Josephine transgresses the children’s film conventions of the time and, concurrently, puts into question the boundaries between childhood and adulthood as well as the rigid division between fine arts for children and adults respectively. These social and artistic issues were highly topical towards the end of the 1960’s, and therefore Grede’s film is characteristic for its time. But simultaneously, it forebodes the artistically and thematically seminal Swedish films and TV series for children of the 1970’s.PubDate: 2018-11-19DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.333Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Sophie Heywood, Helle Strandgaard JensenAbstract: The Little Red Schoolbook (1969) was one of the most well-travelled media products for children from ’68 aimed at children, and it was certainly the most notorious. Over the course of a few years (1970–2) it was translated and published in Belgium, Finland, France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, it also circulated freely in Austria and Luxembourg, and reached beyond Europe to countries including Australia, Japan and Mexico. It led to an obscenity trial in Great Britain, nearly toppled the Australian government, and caused a global publishing scandal. This essay therefore looks at the Scandinavian children’s ’68 in its international context, via a transnational, comparative analysis of the reception of the LRSB, in order to examine how ‘68 counterculture and ideas of childhood clashed and converged in the West around 1970. It asks: what can the publishing history of the LRSB tell us about the distinctive features of children’s media in Scandinavia at this time'PubDate: 2018-11-15DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.332Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Lydia WistisenAbstract: Title: Play in the Anthropocene. Waste Aesthetics in Barbro Lindgren’s Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang (1969) and Loranga, Loranga (1970)The article examines the ecological and aesthetic dimensions of trash in Barbro Lindgren’s children’s books Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang (1969) and Loranga, Loranga (1970). It investigates how Lindgren develops a waste aesthetics by inscribing the child, the play, and the children’s book in a contemporary environmental critique of waste disposal. I argue that her aesthetics differs from the established image of political children’s literature around 1968.The article contributes to the growing field of waste studies, a research area intertwined with material ecocriticism and modernity studies. Stories that connect waste with play and fantasy have the ability to work as counter-narratives and bridge the gulf between human culture and non-human nature. In a traditional environmental discourse nature is configured as a passive victim of exploitation and contamination. These kinds of narratives are performative in their disenchantment of the human-nature relationship, and perpetuate alienation and disinterest. Lindgren’s waste aesthetics, on the other hand, encourages a productive relationship to trash and Loranga, Masarin och Dartanjang and Loranga, Loranga are examples of counter-narratives. PubDate: 2018-11-05DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.316Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)

Authors:Olle WidheAbstract: Title: Fighting All Injustice. Katarina Taikon and the Concept of Children’sRights Around ’68During the 1960s the Swedish Romani author Katarina Taikon’s had become one of the most respected human rights activist in Sweden, fighting for the dignity, social conditions, and health equity of the Romani People. At the end of the decade she began writing books for children, hoping to change the prevailing attitudes and prejudices against the Romani people. In this article, I claim that her writing for children needs to be understood in connection to its immediate political and cultural context. Placing the overlooked children’s book Niki (1970) in center of attention, I argue that it questions the discrimination of the Romani people, but also rephrases the relationship between adults and children. Following this, Niki not only addresses minor shortcomings of an existing political system, it also targets the social order in a more essential way. Even though the narrative of the book takes place during the Second World War, it reveals the class struggle, interrogates traditional child/adult relationships, and attacks established power structures in ways that interact with the existing counterculture around 1968.PubDate: 2018-06-13DOI: 10.14811/clr.v41i0.302Issue No:Vol. 41 (2018)